Download and Read the full report here.

To read more about the America’s Great Outdoors Initiative, please visit: http://americasgreatoutdoors.gov/

Otero Mesa is more than just a place to me. It’s a sanctuary, it’s a place of peace, understanding, reliability, not only for me, but animals of all sorts, as far as spirits go. I felt spiritually reborn; I am concerned for its spiritual well-being. Like a seed it needs care, patience, time, it needs nutrition, not only to a certain extent but for it to be completely pure it needs natural resources to be as providing as possible, it still feeds on its instinctive well-being.

Who are we to contaminate that?

My dream is to keep it pure, pure of bad spirit, pure of unwanted corruption, pure of contamination and for its natural elements to remain. It was not only a stronghold fortress but a place of spiritual renewal and visionary aspects, a place of mental sanity. I can feel it just looking at pictures and remembering the present smells, the sights, the calming sensations of the neutral atmosphere. When I first got the privilege to go visit the place for the first time, I was excited. I couldn’t wait to go, and I knew it would mean the best to go dressed in my cultural clothing, knowing that moccasins haven’t stepped foot on the natural desert terrain for generations. It was something very special to me. A feeling that goes deep into spiritual meaning, a movement that would take away any value that money could never buy. My ancestors presence and to relive the patience of the true nature of our people, my abalone shell on my chest, the buckskin fringes on my dress, the feathers in my hair and the hide under my feet. We were one and we were home, I could feel it. The crunch of rocks and sand underneath my feet, and the sight of the cliffs reaching for the sky. It was all too perfect, like a missing puzzle piece put into place or a diamond in the rough. Those are the best kind. I can see why wildlife is so isolated there, because it’s the strength that Otero Mesa provides, its security.

Dawn, and mist hold the desert, solid cold holds the cliffs. Thousands of exotic desert plants, rocks, grasses and carved-in petroglyphs in visions of our past. A place of focus, a place of spiritual understanding, a place of vision and like any other colorful canvas, a masterpiece of Apache culture. In my eyes, one of the purest in New Mexico wild land, a piece of No Man’s Land. Owned truly of Apache spirit. The consumption of its natural resources, of its maintained minerals will not be used for humanity needs. Never will I see this place be un-naturally treated. Not while I’m alive.

If you would like to learn about how you can help protect Otero Mesa e-mail: apachevoice@aol.com. Visit our beautiful and informative website: Oteromesa.org

Tribal and environmental leaders lobbied the Obama administration this week to designate a national monument on more than a million acres in southern New Mexico, a sacred land to some that contains one of the United States’ most intact and ecologically diverse desert grasslands.

Members of the Mescalero Apache Tribe in southeast New Mexico and a leader of the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance met with Democratic members of the state’s congressional delegation and Interior Department officials to urge protections for Otero Mesa from hardrock mining and oil and gas drilling, which they say threatens the area’s natural values and could harm drinking water.

The 1.2-million-acre area near the Texas border is believed to be the largest and most primitive Chihuahuan Desert grassland left on public lands and is home to 1,000 native species including mule deer, mountain lion, black-tailed prairie dogs and eagles, according to monument supporters.

“I go down to Otero Mesa and I get this powerful feeling that I know came from my ancestors,” said Ted Rodriguez, commissioner of the Mescalero Gaming Commission and a tribal elder. “For me it wasn’t a tourist journey. For me it was a spiritual journey.”

A coalition of environmental groups including the Wilderness Society, World Wildlife Fund and Audubon Society have joined in asking Obama to use his authority under the 1906 Antiquities Act to designate a national monument.

While Obama has yet to use the act, a leaked Bureau of Land Management memo in early 2010 indicated Otero Mesa was among roughly a dozen sites the administration believes qualify for a monument designation if it carries local support.

But while national monuments have been designated by 15 of the past 18 presidents, the act has come under attack from many Western lawmakers, who argue states and Congress should have greater say in its use. Rep. Steve Pearce (R-N.M.), who represents the area where Otero Mesa is located, is among the critics.

“When conserving our natural resources, it is important to have a balanced approach that includes local priorities, such as jobs, the economy, private property and support,” said Pearce spokesman Eric Layer in an email. “Unfortunately, Washington has proven to lack embodiment of these key principles when it comes to federal land management. Before making a determination, the federal government should seek the input of the county, cities and all local residents and stakeholders.”

But while not all officials are on board locally, including some county commissioners and New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez (R), Otero Mesa’s unique history, abundant water resources and biologically diverse grasslands belong to all Americans, said Nathan Newcomer, associate director for the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance.

“Otero Mesa is a national issue, it’s not just a New Mexico issue,” he said. “It’d be right for the president to step up and say ‘Here’s this broad local support. People have been fighting for this area locally for a very long time. Since Congress can’t get anything done, I have the authority to protect this area.’”

The group met this week with staff for Democratic New Mexico Reps. Ben Ray Luján and Martin Heinrich, Sens. Jeff Bingaman (D) and Tom Udall (D), as well as Interior lands and minerals officials to make their case.

“They were very appreciative of our time,” Newcomer said of his meeting yesterday with Interior. “They said, ‘Keep doing what you’re doing.’”

The meeting, which was the first between Interior and Mescaleros, addressed some of the potential difficulties of creating a national monument, including likely opposition from Pearce, Newcomer said.

“I told them that even with those difficulties, the positive side of this is thousands and thousands of New Mexicans who have fought for decades to stop oil and gas development,” he said. Interior “recognized that there was a lot of support.”

A land of multiple uses

While the area offers spiritual sanctuary for some, with American Indian petroglyphs and rock dwellings, a mining company believes it could also safely produce important minerals, while creating jobs, on the mesa’s highest mountain.

Denver-based Geovic Mining Inc. has staked mining claims over 5 square miles in the Otero Mesa area. Last month, conservationists like Newcomer became alarmed when they discovered that the company had more than doubled its claims.

While the area is rich in resources like uranium and lithium, Geovic is particularly interested in eudialyte, a red mineral containing zirconium and rare earths, a group of elements essential in manufacturing numerous technologies and whose demand is expected to increase in the coming years.

“If this exploration project works out the way we expect,” said company founder William Buckovic in a statement, “it will enable production of many key ingredients for materials essential to new green technology and national defense system industries, with limited impact on our environment.”

Although the 1872 mining law gives companies wide latitude to mine on federal land, declaring Otero Mesa a national monument could deal a blow to the company’s plans.

“If you create a national monument now that’s going to trigger the Bureau of Land Management to go through validity analysis, which they would have to conduct specifically for those claims,” Newcomer said. “It’s also going to force the company to go through more hoops, if you will, to try to produce those claims.”

Jack Sherborne, president of new ventures for Geovic, said company leaders are aware of the push to designate the area as a national monument.

“Any mining activity would be more difficult to do than it would be otherwise,” he said. “It may be so difficult to do that it may not be plausible to do.”

Sherborne takes pains to stress the limited nature of the company’s exploration program, he said, designed to avoid more sensitive areas, including land designated by the Bureau of Land Management as an area of critical environmental concern.

“Honestly I don’t trust them,” Newcomer said. “And what I think is going to happen, if they can prove the resource is high, they’re going to say, ‘Look, we’ve hit the jackpot.’”

Not only are American Indians concerned about protecting what they identify as an ancestral homeland, they worry mining will contaminate water resources for decades to come.

“If mining or any kind of drilling or anything like that, it’s going to contaminate the water,” Rodriguez said. “We don’t want that contaminated whatsoever.”

Political stakes

The Obama administration has come under increasing pressure from environmentalists and former Interior officials to use his national monument powers to protect threatened areas including Otero Mesa and Alaska’s Bristol Bay, a push that has met opposition from many lawmakers who say Congress and states should make those decisions.

Former Clinton administration Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt this month said the threat of a national monument alone may be enough to spur lawmakers to pass their own land conservation bills.

But while Clinton designated 19 national monuments, all but one of those were announced during his second term. His first designation of the 1.7-million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah in September 1996 set off a firestorm of criticism from Utah lawmakers and some local residents that has simmered to this day.

The Otero County Commission in spring issued an ordinance expressing concern that “potential federal management plans may reduce or deny citizens of Otero County the ability to pursue historic deeds, such as grazing, native gathering, agricultural wood harvesting, natural plant harvesting.”

Protection advocates described the move as progress, signaling county openness to addressing the issue. They say local farmers and ranchers need not be worried about a monument designation affecting their livelihood.

But monument supporters concede they have very little chance of garnering the support of Martinez or Pearce, who is also a co-sponsor of H.R. 302, which would require the president to gain the consent of the state before designating a monument.

Jude McCartin, spokeswoman for Bingaman, said the senator is listening carefully to all the stakeholders who use Otero Mesa, but is not ready to endorse a monument designation.

“Senator Bingaman hopes very much that whatever the BLM does, it does nothing to degrade that watershed or that aquifer,” she said, referring to the 15 million acre-feet of drinking water believed to underlie the mesa, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

For now, Bingaman is deferring to the White House on any potential designations, McCartin said, adding that the senator has sponsored a pair of bills to designate wilderness and conservation areas in other parts of New Mexico.

By Ted Rodriguez, Alfred LaPaz, Larry Shay, Houston Murphy, and Styve Homnick / Mescalero Apache Advocates For Otero Mesa National Monument

Until a few months ago only a handful of the curious knew the importance of Otero Mesa to the Apache. Otero Mesa is one of the most sacred of places, if not the holiest, to us Apache.

From time immemorial we have had profound ties to this enchanted land.

Historically, Apache country spanned from Western Texas to Eastern Arizona and deep into Northern Mexico. We shared all of New Mexico with the Pueblos.

Otero Mesa is centrally located in the heart of all this, 40 miles south as the crow flies from the Mescalero Apache Indian Reservation. Our ancestors lived here peacefully for many hundreds of years.

Our people were nomadic and we left very few traces, with Otero Mesa being the exception.

In our language, we call ourselves N’dé, “the people,” and like nowhere else, we left behind some of the most fascinating and mystical petroglyphs in America. Here rising majestically out of the Mesa floor, Alamo Mountain harbors our ancestral rock paintings that confess to our fears, our struggles, our joy and our religious faith.

We made seasonal villages on Otero Mesa. We hunted and gathered medicinal herbs, celebrated in ancient song and dance, intermarried with other Apache bands and we worshipped Usen, the creator of the heavens and the earth.

We are a proud monotheistic people. To us Apache, Otero Mesa is our cathedral.

No other ethnic people in North American history have suffered so much from stereotypes as the Apache.

We were described as “bloodthirsty savages” for defending our land from invaders who respected neither our culture nor our faith. Today we live on reservations hidden away to what is left to us of our beloved mountains and plains. Still we struggle.

For most of the past decade, a coalition of groups has worked successfully to safeguard the grasslands, wildlife and freshwater resources of Otero Mesa from full-scale oil and gas drilling. Now, however, a new and even more volatile threat has emerged for this sacred land – hard rock mining.

A plan to mine for so-called “rare earth” minerals has the potential to significantly alter this landscape, but what is rarer than this earth that we hold so sacred?

Just 60 miles south of Otero Mesa in Hudspeth County, Texas, a rare earth mine is already in the early stages of what will likely become a vast open-pit mine. Something of that magnitude has absolutely no place in the heart of Otero Mesa, and this is why it is our mission to support the movement to preserve Otero Mesa as a national monument and ensure that our ancestral homelands are protected.

Our advocacy group is comprised of Mescalero Apache traditional elders and community leaders.

Combined, we have experience serving on the tribal council and various tribal committees and youth programs. We are employed by our local school system and serve in law enforcement. We maintain a Mescalero Apache Mountain Spirit Dance group. As concerned citizens, we wish to share the sacred nature of Otero Mesa with not only our children but also with youths from all cultures and nations.

From World War I up through the present, thousands of Apache men and women fought as U.S. soldiers to protect not only America, but foreign lands from invasion. Now we respectfully ask President Obama, through the American Antiquities Act of 1906, to protect this precious piece of land as a national monument.

Let us take you there! It is a beautiful land!

Click here to read the full letter, and please call Congressman Heinrich to thank him for standing up for Otero Mesa.

 In Albuquerque: 505-346-6781

In Washington, D.C.: 202-225-6316

Environmentalists have won the latest legal skirmish against the oil and gas industry in the battle over Otero Mesa. The U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals invalidated the Bureau of Land Management’s oil and gas drilling plan for Otero Mesa.

The court ruled that the BLM’s original Resource Management Plan Amendment, which opened the vast majority of Otero Mesa to oil and gas leasing and limited protection for the desert grasslands, was flawed because it didn’t consider protecting Otero Mesa and the Salt Basin Aquifer.

The court said the federal agency had to consider an alternative that closed Otero Mesa to oil and gas leasing, admonishing it that “[d]evelopment is a possible use, which BLM must weigh against other possible uses — including conservation, to protect environmental values, which are best assessed through the NEPA process.”

The court went on to write that, “applying the rule of reason, we [the court] agree with the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance that analysis of an alternative closing [of] the Mesa to development is compelled.”

Otero Mesa is located in rural southeastern New Mexico near the Texas border and has been a test case for future oil drilling — pitting environmentalists against the oil and gas industry. Roswell-based wildcatter Heyco has done test drills on Otero Mesa and has assured regulators it can manage the environmental consequences of full scale drilling there. The company has been frustrated by the continuing litigation and is pursuing much of its efforts in Texas.

The state of New Mexico, during the Bill Richardson years, has sided with the green movement in the ongoing battle over Otero Mesa.

4/29/2009 – 4/30/09

To embattled environmentalists and their lawyers, and for politicians taking their side, it came as a ray of sunshine. As for the endangered and threatened animals on whose behalf they’ve been fighting, ni hablar.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for New Mexico’s neck of the woods ruled that the federal rush to allow gas and oil drilling on Otero Mesa was, to put it mildly, flawed. For that matter, said a three-judge panel, so is the Bureau of Land Management logic that it must allow development on public land.

What a turnaround from the dark days of Bush/Cheney, when then-Interior Secretary Gale Norton, wrapping herself in environmental feathers, warbled that what her minions had in mind for the mesa was the most restrictive of its kind “ever developed by the Bureau of Land Management.” And during that time, a federal district judge declared BLM’s plan for that threatened area between Las Cruces and Carlsbad OK.

It was left to state leaders to stall the gas-and-oil giveaway, and the seismo-trucks and drilling rigs an outfit in Roswell was hot to send onto the mesa, endangered aplomado falcons be damned. Gov. Bill Richardson, along with state Energy Secretary Joanna Prukop threw administrative obstacles in the way, while Attorney General Gary King pursued an appeal to the 10th Circuit.

That’s where the state, the enviros, and reason prevailed: This week’s decision could possibly go to the Supreme Court, but drilling proponents and their lawyers still have other routes onto the mesa: The decision doesn’t rule out drilling on the small part of the half-million-acre stretch that’s been targeted; but it could mean that BLM will have to come up with an environmental-impact statement on the entire area.

That could be a deal-killer, especially since BLM and its parent Interior Department now are in responsible hands. The previous administration relied heavily on an old and sickly doctrine: “multiple use” of public lands. Its beneficiaries were still whining Wednesday over the court’s denial of that perceived right.

But, said the judges, multiple use has been misconstrued — it doesn’t mandate that every use be accommodated on every piece of land; “rather,” went the decision, “delicate balancing is required.”

That goes especially for Otero Mesa, said the court, noting that the area has been described as “the most endangered ecosystem type in the United States.”

Appellate-court decisions constitute huge amounts of our nation’s “case law,” so this one, especially if it doesn’t get to the Supremes, could prove persuasive in many a legal campaign against the industrial assault on the West that’s been going on since Ulysses Grant was president.

Some conservationists are saying this is the first time New Mexico has sued the federal government over a public-lands issue. Whether it is or not, it came enhorabuena — and we commend the teamwork of King, Prukop and Richardson in pressing this precedent-setting case.

By SUSAN MONTOYA BRYAN
4-29-09

The Bureau of Land Management failed to comply with federal law in developing a plan for managing oil and natural gas development on southern New Mexico’s Otero Mesa, an appeals court has ruled.

A three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Court of Appeals in Denver said in a ruling filed Tuesday the BLM skirted the National Environmental Protection Act by not considering an alternative that would have put the mesa off limits to drilling and by not analyzing all of the likely impacts of the agency’s chosen alternative.

“BLM’s obligation to manage for multiple use does not mean that development must be allowed on the Otero Mesa,” the ruling states. “Development is a possible use, which BLM must weigh against other possible uses — including conservation to protect environmental values, which are best assessed through the NEPA process.”

The panel also affirmed a lower court ruling that federal law requires the agency to conduct site-specific analysis before leasing any parcels on the mesa.

Tony Herrell, the BLM’s deputy state director for minerals, said Tuesday the agency would review the decision.

“We treat these decisions very seriously and we want to very objectively analyze the decision and our own actions and then come up with what the right determination is,” he said. “If we have a weakness, then we will address it. If we believe we don’t, then we can go ahead and keep our appeal rights open.”

The appellate panel described Otero Mesa as the largest publicly owned expanse of undisturbed Chihuahuan Desert grassland in the United States. It’s home to hundreds of species of plants, mammals, reptiles, birds and insects.

It has become a battleground for environmentalists and the oil and gas industry. Drilling opponents have warned that oil and gas production on the mesa could impact the area’s wildlife and contaminate groundwater.

Nathan Newcomer, associate director of the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance, said the court’s decision highlights the issues that have been at the heart of the Otero Mesa debate for the past eight years.

“The BLM has put oil and gas development on Otero Mesa as the No. 1 priority over the values of wilderness, water and wildlife and it’s really now time for the agency to own up to its responsibilities to do what’s right for this special place and for New Mexicans,” Newcomer said.

During the long legal battle, BLM argued that it went to great lengths to ensure protecting the ecosystem while serving the needs of land-use parties. Under the plan, no more than 5 percent could be disturbed on the grasslands at any specific time.

Industry officials have called the plan one of the most restrictive in BLM history and that the area that would be open for drilling is very small.

Gov. Bill Richardson and other critics have argued that the plan is vague and doesn’t adequately address the impacts of oil and gas development on the region’s water resources and wildlife.

Richardson applauded the court’s decision Tuesday.

“This is a major boost in our fight to protect one of New Mexico’s most ecologically valuable and unique places,” he said in a statement.

New Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Secretary Joanna Prukop said she was pleased with the ruling’s strong language regarding compliance with the National Environmental Protection Act.

“In additional to protecting the fragile ecosystem of the Chihuahan Desert, this decision will apply to development of all kinds on federal lands throughout the 10th Circuit and help assure that environmental impacts are appropriately considered,” she said.

March 13 – 18

By Nathan Newcomer
Associate Director
New Mexico Wilderness Alliance 

As a fifth generation New Mexican and grandson of a roughneck oil worker, I know all about the benefits of oil and gas drilling, and I also know about the consequences to our environment, health, and future quality of life.

The debate over America’s future energy needs currently finds itself spiraling down a hole of misinformation and fear mongering. In a recent commentary by the Citizens Alliance for Responsible Energy, the level of propaganda displayed in this pro-drilling piece reached a pinnacle of disgust, worthy of strong repudiation.

As Sergeant Friday once said, “Just the facts, Ma’am.”

Between 1999 and 2007, the number of drilling permits issued for public lands, both onshore and offshore in the United States, increased 361 percent. This is a staggering statistic that should not be overlooked when debating energy needs in this country.

The Bureau of Land Management has now issued over 28,776 permits to drill on public land. Yet today, only 18,954 wells have been actually drilled. In other words, 10,000 well permits have been stockpiled by the already cash-bloated oil and gas industry.

In addition to that, there is 47.5 million acres of onshore public land that is currently leased by oil and gas companies. Meanwhile, only 13 million of those acres are actually in production.

America cannot afford to stoop so low as to allow the oil and gas industry to drill the last, best, wild places left in the country like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or New Mexico’s Otero Mesa. Industry cries foul that land is locked up, while the facts show otherwise.

Just this past week, there are reports that vast fleets of supertankers, filled with oil, are parked offshore, anchors down and crew idling. Vast storage areas in the United States are swelling with crude because the world is demanding less oil, not more. Thus, oil companies and investors are stashing crude, waiting for demand to rise, perhaps to levels higher than the summer of 2008, so they can turn a large profit later.

In the broader context of energy development in America, the Energy Information Agency affirms that the United States possesses only 3 percent of the world’s total oil reserves, while Middle Eastern countries control roughly 64 percent. Likewise, according to a 2005 BP report “Statistical Review of World Energy,” the United States has just 2.9 percent of proven natural gas reserves.

Throughout the Bush administration years, domestic oil and gas drilling skyrocketed but we never saw the drop in prices at the pump or in our heating bills. At the same time oil companies were reaping record profits and bilking taxpayers, the administration continued to cut investment in conservation and renewable energy initiatives.

Since 2001 there has been a 65 percent increase in home energy prices, which was only exacerbated once the administration instituted a 40 percent cut to the Weatherization Assistance Program – a service designed to help low-wage workers and retirees on fixed incomes conserve energy by insulating their homes.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Fiscal Year 2009 Budget for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy was slashed by 27 percent, while nuclear energy received a $385.5 million increase (37 percent increase from FY 08 appropriations) and fossil fuel energy received a $222.7 million increase (25 percent increase over FY 08 appropriations). While cuts need to be made in any budget, the extremes to which conservation and renewable energy have been slashed are a penny-wise, pound-foolish approach.

The attitude of drilling anywhere and everywhere is not making a real difference for the average citizen. In fact, this type of policy thinking and lobbying is outright dangerous and does a disservice to the American people. We must demand clear facts, comprehensible insight, and robust leadership on energy issues, not the cloudy and murky rhetoric of the oil industry.

Surely, in the words of the late David Brower, “we are not yet so desperate that we must burn our cathedrals for firewood.” Let us also not be so disillusioned as to drill the heart out of America when now is the time for all of us to find it in our own hearts to do the right thing for our country and environment.

Domenici adds voice to support drilling restraint on Otero Mesa

By Michael Becker, Managing Editor
05/24/2007

Sen. Pete Domenici joined the growing chorus of voices calling for a moratorium on natural gas drilling in Otero Mesa.

Domenici, R-N.M., said in a news release issued Wednesday that he has written to the Bureau of Land Management, asking that no drilling be allowed until a U.S. Geological Survey study of the Salt Basin aquifer is completed.

Domenici issued the statement after the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee approved a bill Wednesday he co-sponsored with Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M.

The bill now goes to the full Senate for consideration. It designates several areas in New Mexico, including Otero Mesa and the Tularosa Basin, that will be studied concerning the extent of groundwater resources available.

“We identify the Salt Basin as a priority aquifer to study, including an investigation of the susceptibility of the water to contamination,” Domenici said in the news release. “This sort of review would provide us with critical information on the possible effect of oil and gas development in the Otero Mesa on the Salt Basin aquifer.”

The bill authorizes an analysis of aquifers throughout New Mexico. It will look at the availability of groundwater, the salinity, the interaction between groundwater and surface water and will examine surface and bedrock geology.

A study in 2006 by USGS estimated that the Salt Basin may contain as much as 57 million acre feet of water, including 15 million that is potable. An acre foot is enough water to supply a family of four for an entire year.

“Ninety percent of New Mexicans rely on groundwater for their drinking water supply,” Bingaman said in the same news release. “Increasing demands on this limited resource means it’s critical for us to fully understand our aquifers.”

The effort is being backed by both environmentalists and sportsmen. At the same time the Senate committee was approving the bill, a joint effort between Trout Unlimited and the National Wildlife Federation was preparing to unveil their Sportsmen’s Public Lands Energy Agenda.

The groups will be holding a press conference on the agenda today in Washington, D.C. Among those participating will be Tim Turri of Alamogordo. Turri owns and operates Turri’s Sure Shot Outfitters, a big game hunting service that provides guided hunting services on public land, including Otero Mesa.

The agenda calls for a moratorium on all new oil and gas leases on public lands until plans are in place to protect wildlife habitat and water resources, among other measures.

Time needed to research aquifer in the Salt Basin

06/05/2007

Bipartisanship, lacking as it is in today’s divisive political arena, can be a wonderful thing.

It is especially welcomed with the meeting of the minds of New Mexico’s two U.S. senators, one a Democrat, the other a Republican, in calling for a groundwater resources study that will shed light on the nature and extent of water resources in New Mexico.

Senators Pete Domenici (R-NM) and Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) have co-sponsored the New Mexico Aquifer Assessment Act, which instructs the U.S. Geological Survey, in collaboration with the State of New Mexico, to study water in the Estancia Basin, Tularosa Basin, Hueco Basin, Middle Rio Grande Basin – and the Salt Basin aquifer in a southern New Mexico area that includes the ecologically sensitive and unique Otero Mesa.

The bill won approval in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee in late May and is ready for full Senate consideration.

In conjunction, Bingaman and Domenici have asked the Bureau of Land Management to delay federal oil and gas activities on Otero Mesa until a water assessment in the region is completed.

The Ruidoso News supports a moratorium as a critical step in determining the quality and quantity of water in the Salt Basin – water that might support the kind of regional growth that is already impinging on El Paso and southern New Mexico.

We daresay water, not oil, is our most precious commodity, for we can never drill our way to “energy independence,” nor can we fully restore an environmentally degraded area to its pristine state.

A coalition of ranchers, conservationists, hunters, recreationists, scientists, outfitters and others – spanning the spectrum of left to right – are opposed to oil and gas development on Otero Mesa, period. Arrayed against them are some well-financed, lobbyist-influenced members of Congress, such as New Mexico Representative Steve Pearce, and, of course, the top echelons of Big Oil.

The Ruidoso News hopes that it is not too late to stop the BLM’s seemingly headstrong march to allow oil and gas development on Otero Mesa. We hope that the people’s voices, and not those of self-serving corporate interests, will rule the day.

We hope that a potential water oasis will be rescued for future generations and for our thirsty, growing communities, and that Otero Mesa will remain, as former Lincoln County Chairman Rick Simpson has said, “real close to the way God made it.”

EDITORIAL

04/21/2007

Calls for a moratorium on oil and gas drilling in the Otero Mesa are reasonable, given plans to study the extent and quality of the Salt Basin aquifer that sits underneath it.

The U.S. Geological Survey and the state’s Interstate Stream Commission are preparing to begin that study. USGS currently estimates there are 15 million acre feet of water in that aquifer. At present consumption levels, that would last about 156 years.

Natural gas, on the other hand, appears to be in more limited supply on the mesa. Again, no one knows the exact extent of those reserves, but they are not expected to last more than a decade or two. And the amount extracted would barely be sufficient to cover even a few hours’ worth of America’s daily consumption.

Given Otero County’s water woes, it simply makes sense to ensure nothing is done that might jeopardize that water supply. As was pointed out at Thursday evening’s public forum, oil and gas drilling can contaminate groundwater, especially in areas where the soil is similar to that on the mesa.

If the forum was any indication, the moratorium has broad support. At one point, moderator Rick Simpson asked if anyone present was opposed to the idea of a moratorium. One person expressed some reservations, but there was no outright opposition to holding off on drilling.

Sen. Jeff Bingaman has written to Dirk Kempthorne, secretary of the Department of the Interior, urging him to defer any drilling leases until the Salt Basin study is complete.

We are adding our voice as well. Let the study be completed before any decisions on drilling are taken. The water under the mesa is more valuable and more abundant than the natural gas. We shouldn’t sacrifice long-term growth potential for short-term energy gains.

This paper has argued that Alamogordo needs to give greater consideration to desalination technology, and begin to pursue using the water that sits under both the mesa and the Tularosa Basin. Already, a Colorado company is looking at tapping into the Salt Basin to supply water to El Paso.

If the city waits too long, it will find itself at the end of the queue. So in addition to imposing a moratorium on gas drilling, the city needs to get serious about ways to utilize that water. The city’s growth potential depends on securing more water supplies.